The Last
by Beaglicious
Summary: Bishop reflects on her time spent with Goren. Does she have any regrets? Spoilers through S3. No ships.


**The Last**

**Disclaimer: Not mine.**

**A/N: This fic is what happens when you watch too much L&O: CI third season at one time.  
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**Summary: Bishop reflects on her time spent with Goren. Does she have any regrets? May contain spoilers for any episode through season three.**

I am the last of them. The baby, if you will. An accident, really. Joe Houston was supposed to have been the last of them and was, in fact, holder of that title for nearly three years. But then Eames went and got herself pregnant, and so I became the last of Robert Goren's partners.

I know everyone wonders who I pissed off to get stuck baby-sitting Goren while Eames was on maternity leave, confined first to her desk and then later to her bed. Before Eames came along, the worst departmental infractions were saddled with Goren. I think I heard once that during those years, officer misconduct dropped to an all-time low.

But I did nothing of the sort. Getting assigned to Goren was to be a holiday of sorts for me, as well as a great opportunity to work in MCS. "Don't worry, Bishop," my captain said. "He's changed."

You know how your girlfriend always gives you that same line when she's trying to justify seeing an ex you both know is no good for her? And you look at her dubiously, with both of you knowing full well that she's lying? Well, it was the same thing with Goren, except that time I fell for the lie.

He did change with Eames, there's no doubt about it. But the second she was out of his life, he reverted right back to the old Robert Goren - an irritable, twitchy hulk of a man whose notorious temper flared the moment he had to slow down to accommodate us mere mortal beings.

I caught the worst of it, obviously. Like the time we were investigating the mother with the two adopted sons from Romania, and he patronizingly reminded me to be sure and lock up her medicine cabinet when I was done. You know Eames would have never stood for such talk, not that he would have ever uttered those words to her in the first place. And then there was the time he wrapped his large hand around my neck and pushed me down the hall of the apartment of a victim, re-enacting the crime scene with me as an unwilling participant because he'd gotten all worked up over some cookie crumbs. Again, do you think he would have ever dared (or even wanted to) manhandle Eames that way? But the worst times were when he would sulk and scowl at Eames' empty desk, and even throw things at her chair when he thought no one was looking. I certainly wasn't about to call him out on it and redirect his anger at me. There's more than that, obviously. But at any rate, he was no different than when Joe finally threw his hands up in disgust and left.

And so I was the last. They say those who don't learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them, and I did just that. I didn't learn from Eames that Goren could be controlled and contained. Instead, the first time Goren went, well, Goren on me, I stepped back, wrapping myself in the security of the tales I'd been told and further insulating myself with my own experiences, and wrote him of as 'crazy Robert Goren.'

But now, watching him back with Eames, seeing the way he smiles so easily at her, I realize I made a mistake. I judged and condemned Goren on who he was then, not who he had been. And so while I may have plenty of stories to share with the rest of his exes down at O'Malley's, I have, in the process, lost something far more valuable. I'm not saying I could have replaced Eames. I certainly had no intention or desire to do so. But I think that if I'd really listened to him, instead of filtering his words through the harsh tales of his past, that we could have been something more than two cops thrown together out of circumstance. We could have been partners. But when he pushed me away that first time, I let him, instead of pushing back, the way Eames does, and forcing him to share the precipitous ledge he totters on.

I am the last. But I was no better than the first.

_Fin_


End file.
